Sex Offender Alerts to Be Nationwide

by Katy Murcutt - Paralegal

03 March 2010, filed under Consumer

Parents will be able to check if someone is a sex offender by March 2011 nationwide according to the Home Office. A year-long pilot scheme that took place last year in England and Wales resulted in at least sixty children being protected from sex offenders. A similar pilot scheme will be launched in Scotland at a later date.

The pilot scheme was run in four areas of England over the course of a year to establish the effectiveness the scheme would have if implemented under law. Warwickshire, Cleveland, Hampshire and Cambridgeshire each ran the pilot scheme to record how successful they were at protecting children under the scheme in contrast with the current legislation.

During the pilot scheme the largest recorded number of applicants was father’s who had concerns about the new partner of their ex-partner.

When the scheme is officially in place, police will be able to give parents more detailed information about the people who have access to their children. In the past, a concerned parent could inform the police of their apprehension regarding a particular person with access to their child; however it was unclear whether child protection officers were duty-bound to disclose information to parents on what they found.

When the pilot scheme took place, police were instructed on how and when to pass on information to concerned parents. The reason for this was to prevent the spread of panic among parents in the community and to prevent vigilante attacks on registered sex offenders.

The Home Office have said that the initial interest in the scheme was less than what had been expected with three-hundred and fifteen applications issued over the course of the year.

In total, during the pilot scheme, the police disclosed details of thirty-two individuals who had a record of sex offending or whom posed a substantiated risk to children.

One parent contacted the scheme when a neighbour began to offer sweets to children. The police confirmed that the neighbour in question was in fact a registered sex offender who had been banned from making contact with children. The neighbour was arrested immediately and remanded in custody for breaching the terms of his release.

Although the take-up of the scheme was less than expected, the result of the pilot scheme confirmed that the safeguards already in place were strengthened by the operation of the scheme.

Sarah’s law, which was created by Sara Payne, the mother of eight-year-old school girl Sarah Payne who was murdered by a convicted paedophile, called for a British version of a US law that permitted the disclosure of the identity and home addresses of registered sex offenders. Ms Payne stated that the scheme was successful in functioning to “check that adults who have access to (children) do not pose a danger.”

The proposed scheme will not provide such detailed information as it’s US counterpart, but it will operate to benefit both children and their parents by providing controlled access to information to keep children safe.

Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, has said that the scheme would be extended to include a minimum addition of eighteen police forces across England and Wales from August of this year in the hope that by March 2011 every police force in England Wales will be subject to this scheme.